Paradigm City

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The main setting of the televised anime series The Big O is called Paradigm City, located next to a sea and a vast desert wasteland. The series takes place after "The Event," an unknown occurrance which left everyone with no memories of their past, and apparently decimated the world outside of the city limits. The city is maintained and controlled by the monopolistic Paradigm Corporation. The city itself is divided into the higher-income population residing inside geodesic domes, and the remainder of the population, whether poor or not, living outside the domes. At many times during the series Alex Rosewater, head of the Paradigm Corporation, alludes to the fact that he either does not care about those living outside the domes, or that the city would be better off without them. Androids coexist with the human inhabitants of Paradigm City; their numbers are actually fairly low and they're something of a rarity, but there are enough of them that denizens of the city are not shocked about them and don't treat it as particularly unusual to encounter one.

[edit] City design

It appears that each dome has its own "sun," a source of light that orbits along the outside of the dome which rises and sets just as the natural sun would. The structure of the domes themselves also become important during some of Roger Smith's battles in the Big O, such as his fight against Schwarzwald in "Act 12".

Roger travels to various areas of the city to meet with his clients as well as get information from an informant called Big Ear at the "Speakeasy", a bar/pub outside the domes. He also travels to Paradigm Dome for a few jobs, although he despises the company and its headquarters.

The old underground subway and maintenance systems were abandoned after The Event, as everyone was afraid to go below the surface of the city. Many believe, rightly, that hidden secrets from before The Event lurk in these unexplored warrens. Secret laboratories and other installations from before The Event are tucked away in the underground, where none dare look. Roger Smith is unafraid to use the old subway system as a means of quickly transporting Big O around Paradigm City as needed: an immense tank-like vehicle that contains the Big O uses the subway tracks to maneuver around the city and then raise the Big O on a platform so that it may burst forth from underground. As a result, no one can track Big O's movements to Roger's house. However, even Roger has only mapped out the basic subway grid to use to move Big O around, and even to Roger almost all of the underground is an entirely separate world that he is afraid to go into. In episode 4, Roger ventured further down than he ever had before, and found that the deeper you go the more modern the surroundings become; newer installations were built below the older ones. Thus while the tunnels near the surface are simply old subway lines, the regions very deep down are from right before the Event and house exotic technologies that are unknown on the surface, such as the ruined Archetype found by Schwarzwald.

Beyond Paradigm City, there is nothing: whatever happened in The Event 40 years ago turned the rest of the world into an endless desert, and Paradigm City is believed to be all that remains, to the point that its inhabitants scoff at the idea of surviving "foreigners" as simply myth. Paradigm City itself is essentially a city-state, with fields immediately surrounding the city (within driving distance) where crops are grown to feed those within. However, during the course of the series a group called "The Union" surfaces which appears to be made up of foreigners who are infiltrating the city. However, in the surreal final episodes their actual status as foreigners is called into question. Although Union members themselves believe they are really from outside of Paradigm City, it is suggested but not substantiated that they are really clones or androids produced as an experiment within the city, and then cast out, and whoever they think they are working for doesn't exist. In the end of the Big O series Angel learns from Gordon that she and Vera are "tomatoes," Gordon's experimentally-made children which his memories were passed on to.

A large portion of the city is also submerged in the waters just off the coast. It appears that during The Event, there was either a massive rise in sea levels, or a large portion of the city sank into the sea, or both, forming a new coastline. Many of the taller buildings can still be seen protruding from the water. The submerged city also acts as a large artifical reef, and attracts a large amount and variety of fish and other oceanlife, which is harvested to help feed the city's population.

In the final episodes of the series, as Roger's Megadeus sinks into the sea, he sees below the submerged portion of the city, what appears to be a large series of gigantic gears and mechanical equipment below the ruins, lending support to the theory that the entire city itself, even the old submerged ruins, may just be a fabrication.

[edit] A city that never sleeps

It is clear from evidence shown in the series that Paradigm City may be modeled after New York City. Some of the evidence:

• In episode 1 (Roger the Negotiator), as Roger is traveling to the site of the meeting with Beck, the World Trade Center can be seen in the distance. (The series premiered in Japan before September 11, 2001.)
• In episode 5 (Bring Back My Ghost), it is mentioned that Officer Fraizer fell into the Hudson River.
• In episode 12 (Enemy Is Another Big!), one of the battle scenes is supposedly fought at the ruins of the JFK airport and is mentioned as JFK Mark by Dan Dastun (the ruins are at the edge of the wastelands, which suggests that almost everything beyond the airport ruins has been destroyed).
• In episode 17 (Leviathan), the remnants of the Coney Island amusement park and the Cyclone roller coaster are clearly shown.
• In episode 19 (Eyewitness), an android killer is shown wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap.
• In episode 20 (Stripes), Angel finds herself drawn to the ruins of Grand Central Terminal.
• Also in episode 20 (Stripes), Big Fau rises out of the ground through the Washington Arch.
• In several episodes Roger pays Big-Ear for his services with what would appear to be US currency.
• Whenever he visits Big Ear, Roger drives over what appears to be the Brooklyn Bridge
• In one of the last two episodes Roger sees Vera in what appears to be Lincoln Tunnel.

Although Paradigm City might be New York City, or an imitation of it, it is much more expansive than the New York City of today. While there are recognizable landmarks from New York City's past, (i.e. the Grand Central Terminal) building apparently expanded in all directions and within the old boundaries itself. Paradigm City was actually "founded" on the ruins of an earlier city; details are scarce but it appears that Paradigm City is considered to have been founded when the domes were constructed and order re-established after chaos ensuing The Event, but that much of the city predates that. The ruins that the "new" Paradigm City was built on were meant to sustain a much larger population than the current city supports: the city is only filled to about half the capacity that it could potentially sustain. As a result, giant robot battles that cause massive property damage aren't much of a problem, as they either destroy abandoned buildings, or people displaced from destroyed buildings can easily find more that are available.

[edit] Culture

The inhabitants of Paradigm City appear to only remember bits and pieces of what religion was like before the Event, though numerous episodes show its inhabitants practicing Christianity, or at least Christianity in some shape or form, as people congregate in meeting places with crucifixes prominently displayed. However, it is revealed in episode 11 that no one (rather, almost no one) clearly remembers what Christmas is at all, and several old cathedrals now stand in ruins, their original purpose unknown (some of the elderly occasionally feel compelled to stand in front of them and sing scraps of hymns, but they don't clearly remember why they do this). Half based on vague memories of a holiday on December 25th, and half as a celebration to commemorate the founding of Paradigm City (which happened around the same time of the year), Christmas Day is now celebrated as "Heaven's Day". Heaven's Day is apparently an almost entirely secular holiday, which started out as an annual celebration of the founding of the city by giving bread and wine to the poor. As the city grew more prosperous over the course of 40 years, people started giving presents to the ones they loved, and it grew into a commercial shopping extravaganza not unlike modern day Christmas celebrations. The inhabitants of the city still put up generic Christmas decorations like decorated Christmas trees and streamers, but they don't really know the underlying reason behind all of this. However, Alex Rosewater at least knew that the real reason for the celebration was that "it's the day God's son was born". Whether he was referring to a memory of the original holiday, or to himself in comparison to his father is unknown.